Millie’s Christmas Hols
by RillaOfIngleside
Summary: Millie comes home for Christmas after her first term at school, and all is well at the Castle. But at an outing to the circus she meets a strange girl with a wild, fizzing magic and Millie takes it upon herself - with the help of a slightly reluctant Christopher - to find out more about her, and see if they can help...
1. 1

"Bowbridge station coming up! All passengers for Bowbridge alight here. Bowbridge station."

The clang of the conductor's bell and the clamour of his booming voice as he walked down the train roused Millie from her reverie with a bit of a bump. She'd been watching the snow as it started to fall lightly on the fields as they trundled along - a rare sight in mid-December, as several fellow passengers had remarked to her and to each other several times.

Millie had just smiled in response. Although in some ways it seemed as though she'd always lived in England, Series XIIA, she still hadn't quite got into the national rhythm of endless conversation about the weather - and besides, it was the first snow she'd ever seen and she wanted to drink in every drop of the sight of the delicate white flakes dancing to the ground. It seemed as though the dusk was rising, rather than the sun setting, and extending a friendly half light over the landscape as they approached the little town. Millie started the lengthy business of putting on coat and hat and gloves - the sheer quantity of layers required for her new life was something that she was also still constantly surprised by - and gathering the belongings she'd packed for the winter holidays. Her housemistress had mostly left her to it, so it was full principally of books and had Millie not been able to use magic, almost without noticing that she was doing it, to lighten it, the bag would have been almost impossible for a 12 year old girl to lift. The magic Millie had used had been the kind that meant the bag was lighter only for her, meaning that the Porter who kindly took the bag from her with a "let me, Miss" as she descended from the train at Bowbridge promptly dropped it on his foot.

Millie, who had quite forgotten the weight of the bag and that she'd bespelled it in the first place, was so busy apologising to the Porter and taking the bag back herself that she didn't notice anyone on the platform until she heard a shout of "Millie!" in a voice which packed two different octaves into the two syllables. It could have been the normal difficulties of the male voice as it breaks in puberty and is unable to decide stick to a pitch for several months, or it could have been the force of Christopher's delight as he came rushing towards her, taller than ever with snow in his black hair, the magenta coloured lining of his coat flying behind him as he ran. Millie had written to Miss Rosalie with the time of her train and expected to be met by a carriage. For some reason it hadn't occurred to her that that carriage might also contain Christopher.

Dropping the bag again (not quite on the Porter's foot) and with a total absence of self consciousness or any thought behind how smashing it was to see him, she rushed at Christopher and flung her arms around him with such force that he staggered backwards before righting himself and whirling her around. They beamed stupidly at one another in the snow - which felt much less cold as it landed on her face than Millie had expected, she noticed in the midst of her talking and laughing and hugging. A dry cough caused her to look up and see Gabriel De Witt standing a few feet away, dressed entirely in black and looking as though he would actively prefer to be at the funeral he was so suitably attired for.

But Millie remembered how kind it had been of him to take her in, how he'd offered one his lives for hers, how he'd insisted on her taking his surname to lend her an air of respectability amongst her upper class peers at school, despite protestations from many of his staff that rumours would fly that Millie wasn't the great-niece he was claiming but "something worse" and that reports of him having produced an illegitimate child would cause him embarrassment and distraction in his regular dealings with ministers and other officials. Gabriel had insisted that his reputation as utterly lacking in any personal interest in any member of the human race if eithe sex would protect him from any such scurrilous rumours and so it had proved so far - but still, sharing his surname had made Millie feel much more as though she belonged to the world she now lived in, and to Chrestomanci Castle in particular. It was also jolly sporting of him to come and stand on a freezing platform with Christopher to meet her, of course.

So she greeted him with a hug scarecely less enthusiastic than the one she'd given Christopher, although Gabriel patted her arm awkwardly rather than returning it. Christopher took her bag from the Porter, extravagantly if self-importantly tipping him half a crown as he did so.

"What on earth have you got packed in here, bars of lead? No no, it's not too heavy for _my _manly arms" he proclaimed, immediately enchanting it to weigh next to nothing and twirling it around balanced on his forefinger. Millie laughed and swatted at it, attempting to throw it off balance as she half walked and half skipped down the platform and over the railway bridge.

The excitement of the snow and the dark and the delight of being back together - much stronger than either of them had expected - made them get sillier and sillier as they clamboured up into the carriage, feeling about six years old again and fizzing over with hilarity over everything and nothing. Gabriel wordlessly opted to sit in the front with the coachman rather than remain in the midst of such silliness.

Christopher's black eyes gleamed like coals in the half light of dusk and the faint glow from the gas lamps as he grinned at Millie.

"Let's go home".


	2. 2

Millie felt a tug of shyness as they approached Chrestomanci Castle. The whiteness of the settling snow leant it a fairytale appearance as the carriage made its progress up the long drive, through the greatly sloping parkland over which the Castle presided. But the Castle now housed a small group of young enchanters, Christopher's classmates, most of whom had arrived after she'd already left for school and whom she'd never met. Gabriel's ideas about how much holiday was required for the rest and revitalising of young minds turned out to be, predictably, much less generous than those of the traditional teaching profession: so Millie was back from school a week before lessons at the Castle would cease and these other children would go home.

Christopher obligingly rattled through the children she would expect to meet.

"Jason you know already, of course - funny to think of him ever being a boot boy now. He's as full of tricks as ever, thank goodness, or things would be pretty dull. Then there's Bernard - he's only about eleven and he's a bit serious but he's actually a really good bat, and he's shaping up to have a decent spin on his bowling. Not that there's any cricket to be had at the moment of course and whatever Jason says about it, football just doesn't compare..." Christopher sank into a momentary gloom as he contemplated the deficiencies of football as compared to cricket.

"At least it's not lacrosse", Millie put in, and they both started laughing. Millie had written lengthily and with great passion about her experiences with the various field sports in which she had been required to participate over the previous term.

"True! Well, then there's Elizabeth - she's awfully nice though she gets fed up with the rest of us, I think. She's been looking forward to you coming back so that there's another girl amongst us. There Phyllis of course, but she and Paul only live in London so they go home at weekends. They'll be back on Monday morning bright and early for lessons, worse luck for them. And that's it!"

Millie knew most of this already, because Christopher had turned out to be an unexpectedly faithful letter writer. In the first few weeks of school particularly, feeling homesick and remembering how envious Christopher had been of her being allowed to go away to school, she'd written him detailed accounts of the school building, lessons, the other girls, the teachers, the food - everything. She'd found she enjoyed it and she kept it up. The letters he had, somewhat surprisingly, sent regularly in response, were full of detail about the goings on at the Castle. Some of it Millie could have happily done with less of (particularly the lengthy passages about Christopher's clothes and the minutiae of his latest falling out with Gabriel), but mostly she'd been delighted to hear all the news from what had, at the start of the autumn term, just started to feel like home. She'd kept all of the letters under her pillow, in a bundle tied with a green ribbon.

Thanks to the letters, when the horses stopped neatly outside the vast carved front door of the Castle and Millie and Christopher tumbled out of the carriage and into the grand hall, she almost felt she knew the new ones in the sea of faces already.

"We've been waiting simply ages for you to come", said Elizabeth, warmly, when Millie was released from a warm joint hug from Rosalie and Mordecai. Tall, fair and pale, Elizabeth was both exactly and not at all as Christopher had described her: he had somehow conveyed a suggestion of beakishness about her long nose, but it really just lent her face an elegant roman profile. The niceness he'd attributed to her was already apparent, though, and her advanced age of 14 didn't stop her from crying joyfully "Oh, don't take your coats off! Let's all go and play in the snow".

They did, of course. The acres of Castle grounds were perfect for it, and Millie found snowball fighting infinitely more enjoyable a team sport than any she'd done during games at school. Was it something to do with not having to hold a stupid stick, she wondered, fleetingly as she raised a wind to blast a snow flurry in Jason's laughing face as he lunged at her? Or perhaps the fact that nobody was taking it seriously - there were no rules, sometimes people used magic and sometimes they didn't, nobody knew or cared who was on which team, they were just a central mass of youthful ebullience as they whirled and whooped in the snow.

The snow was falling thicker and faster, suddenly, and again Millie was struck breathless at the wonder, the beauty of it - and the sheer unlikelihood. How absolutely extraordinary that these perfect cold white petals should be floating in the dark sky and that she should be there to see them! She stretched her arms out and lifted her face to the sky, and drank it all in. The sound of cavorting, although the others were only feet away, was muted by that eerie muffling effect that snow has and she felt quite alone with her delight. It was a moment that she never forgot, her first snow (and it was a memory which served her well in the months of less idyllic, but more common, English winter weather to come).

Millie at last lowered her face from the sky and through the falling flakes she saw Christopher standing, snowball in hand, staring at her oddly, intently. There was a moment where she felt his eyes upon her and it was as though they were touching her skin. The others seemed further away than ever, and she started to blush without knowing why.

"This is _ridiculous", _she thought, and scooped up a handful of the snow lying thickly at her feet. Anything unsettling about the moment was immediately forgotten as Christopher's black hair was hidden by white powder, and he swooped to take his revenge.


	3. 3

There was both welcome and unwelcome news at dinner time. Flavian, who greeted Millie with great enthusiasm, insisted on sitting next to her at the table to hear all the details about her term at school, and to regale her with reminiscences about his own days at boarding school. She picked up several good ideas for using magic to get out of games and get the right answers in algebra, and guffawed over Flavian's tales of pranks pulled on the old irascible french master.

"I used to enchant the blackboard to make anything written on it disappear after a minute, you see, so that by the time he'd finished writing the sentences we were to translate, the first part would be gone. We would cry out "but Sir! How does it begin?" Mr Treadle would call us idiots and whirl around with his cane to point at the board, and then whirl back round to us and splutter with angry confusion. Before anyone realised how strong my magic was it didn't occur to them that an upper third boy could do that, so there were many happy lessons where nobody did any french at all! How he ranted and raved and searched frantically behind the blackboard every time, thinking a boy must be hiding somewhere and rubbing the words out on the sly." Flavian's face shone pink with happy remembrance. Suddenly he noticed Christopher staring from his place a few seats along at the long dining table. Christopher's mouth wasn't exactly open in surprise - it would take more than an unexpected lax in moral rectitude on the part of his tutor to make him assume any expression he considered undignified - but he still gave the impression of someone struck dumb. Flavian recovered himself:

"Ah, erm, I mean, it was very wrong of course and I would never advocate such... erm..." He evidently decided it would be easier just to change the subject and continued more brightly "Anyway, Millie, it will be a delight to have you joining our lessons on Monday!"

Millie, always less conscious of her dignity than Christopher, _did _stare with her mouth open for a moment. "Lessons? But I won't be going to lessons with the others, will I? I mean, that's what I've been doing at school! I've brought home simply tons of books to read!" Millie's long-cherished vision of herself spending the principal part of the holidays curled up in an armchair by the fire and reading for hours on end stared to shrivel away before her eyes. Christopher gave her a look of comradely sympathy as Flavian patiently explained that the basic magic lessons offered at her school would hardly scratch the surface of the sort of magic she had and would need to learn to use and control - which indeed Millie had already discovered. She often used magic lessons to write to Christopher, in fact, because it took only a fraction of her concentration to perform the simple spells the other girls were spending the hour trying, and mostly failing, to master. "Gabriel will give you additional tuition himself in the afternoons on steps the others have covered whilst you were away", Flavian beamed, apparently genuinely unaware that this made things ten times worse, not better. "It's all been perfectly worked out so that you go to boarding school just as the Priestess who entrusted Gabriel with your care commanded, but without seriously neglecting your magical education".

Millie finished her beef stew and carrots somewhat soberly. This was very much not what she had had in mind, but it was hard to argue with the sensible reasons for the arrangement when the only counter argument was an impassioned "but I don't want to!". She sighed. The magical snow was shrouded behind the dining room's heavy velvet curtains, and the sparkling promise of the holidays had gone distinctly flat.

Things looked up at pudding time, when a steaming sticky toffee pudding with custard was set before her - her favourite pudding. When she looked up with pleasure she saw, from far down the chattering table, Rosalie looking at her and smiling. Rosalie picked up here spoon and winked at Millie. Millie felt a warm prickle of pleasure at the knowledge that Rosalie, despite the distraction of her seemingly endlessly complicated wedding preparations, had remembered to order Millie's favourite pudding for her coming home dinner.

Even better, as the children trooped off to the large sitting room next to the school room which has become known by the grown ups as "the playroom", Bernard said excitedly to Christopher "have you told Millie about the circus yet?"

"Don't be a fool", Christopher said in a kindly way. "I haven't had the chance. Millie, there's a circus encamped in a field near Bowbridge and Flavian says we're all to go!"

"The second last show is to be this coming Friday", added Bernard, almost jumping with excitement "and we're all going to go to it before we go home for the holidays! There are lions and elephants and people who do dancing whilst horses run around the ring".

"And clowns!" added Jason. "I might run off and join em." Everyone laughed as Jason attempted a handstand and a forward roll, crashing into the table as his handstand capsized. Millie hastily summoned a cushion which appeared on the floor about a quarter of a second before Jason's head slammed on to it, and then everybody conjured cushions to line the floor whilst they attempted great tumbling feats. Christopher succeeded in standing on his head against the wall, but then discovered he couldn't think of a way to right himself. Elizabeth performed an almost-cartwheel: had it not been for her long skirts and petticoats it would probably have been quite graceful. Bernard's and Millie's efforts could really only be described as jumping and rolling around, but they made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in skill.

Millie was still bubbling with excitement about the prospect of a circus when she went to her water-bottle heated bed that night. She only stopped thinking about it long enough to bask in the glory of having a room to herself, after 11 weeks in a dormitory, and she went to sleep with her mind full of images - none quite accurate, for of course there were no circuses in the world she came from - of big tops and ringmasters and performing seals.


	4. 4

Having to do lessons during the holidays wasn't nearly as bad as Millie had feared. For one thing, Proudfoot and Throgmorten were allowed in and out of the school room - and everywhere else in the Castle for that matter - with the perfect freedom which befitted a Temple cat and which saved everyone a lot of time, given that there was no earthly way to stop them. Sitting at a desk with a purring Proudfoot warm and self-satisfied on your lap was jolly, and at least once a day there would be the fun of watching Flavian stiffen as he saw Throgmorten prowl in, and then move elaborately gingerly between the desks, pretending to check work or look out of windows, in order to be as far from Throgmorten as possible.

Millie also found that wearing the warm winter dresses that Rosalie had arranged to be awaiting her, instead of the school uniform of navy sailor blouse and skirt of the past 11 weeks, made more difference than she would have expected. She was not a girl to whom clothes were of much interest, but there was something freeing about clothes which were just for her rather than required by regulation, and there was a dress made of a wintry purple and green tartan in particular which gave her great pleasure.

Lessons relating to magic took up the whole of the morning, and the afternoons were devoted to maths, history and the like - all subjects which it was assumed that Millie's school had taught her amply. The afternoons were when she had her special tuition with Gabriel. At first she felt slightly anxious heading to his study after lunch. Christopher's parting words of "rather you than me" as he went back to the school room hardly helped.

But it turned out that Gabriel had no intention of any formal teaching. Instead, he carried on with his regular Chrestomanci tasks but talked to Millie about what he was doing, explaining at great length the subject matter of every letter brought to him for signature and the intricacies of whichever type of magic it involved, and asked her opinion about questions concerning it. Millie found it quite interesting and has no idea how much she was learning. She was almost disappointed on Thursday when she learned in the morning that Gabriel had been called away during the previous night, and as was the way with the work of Chrestomanci, there was no knowing when he would be back.

"Lucky devil" remarked Christopher grumpily, as they walked up the stairs after breakfast.

"I suppose I am", said Millie, not quite able to explain how she felt to Christopher, who persisted in believing that any time spent with Gabriel must be sheer torture. "At last a whole afternoon to read!"

"Not you, silly - him! I can't wait until it's my turn to whisk myself off and sort everything out with a wave of my hand".

"I shouldn't think that that's quite how it-"

"That's exactly how it is, for all I know!" Christopher interjected in frustration. "Since Gabriel refuses to ever involve me with any real work, never tells me anything that matters let alone takes me with him when he's called away. How am I supposed to learn how to do anything when I'm stuck in a stupid schoolroom all day?"

He at least had the grace to look embarrassed when he saw Flavian and the others waiting for them at the top of the stairs.

Perhaps these thoughts were still rankling in Christopher's mind when Gabriel returned, tired and wrung out, from the magical emergency he had spent the last 36 hours resolving and in no mood to be patient or understanding. At any rate, Christopher and Gabriel happened to have a ten minute conversation on Friday morning which descended after one minute into an exchange of sarcastic, although apparently courteous, comments and after three into an all-out shouting match, the upshot of which was that Christopher was forbidden from going to the circus that night.

At first nobody could believe it. Millie and Jason spent lunchtime formulating increasingly elaborate plans for smuggling Christopher out of the castle and to the circus, whilst Bernard and Elizabeth grilled Christopher on what had happened and whether Gabriel could possibly - surely he couldn't? - have meant it.

"Oh he meant it all right", said Christopher, bitterly.

"But you can break the enchantments, can't you? You could just go anyway!" Bernard looked around guiltily as he made the suggestion, looking slightly horrified by his own daring.

"Yes, but _he'd _know at once and he'd just make me come back in some simply horrid fashion" said Christopher savagely spearing a potato. "I don't care about the stupid circus anyway. He can keep it".

The great extent to which this was not true could hardly have been clearer, but everyone could see that a pretended truculent indifference was the only way Christopher could find to deal with his disappointment and humiliation. The others tried their best to contain their excitement as they gathered in the hall after an early tea, ready to pile into the carriage with Mordecai and Flavian. Christopher lurked at the first landing of the great stair case, glowering and haughty. Elizabeth couldn't help but call up to him "Oh Christopher, what a shame! We'll tell you all about it in the morning", and was met with a withering glare. Millie gave him a quiet wave, feeling both guilty that she hadn't thought of nobly offering to stay behind with him and also hugely relieved that she hadn't, lest he had taken her up on it.

"To the circus!" cried Bernard, as the housekeeper shut the huge door behind them. The children whooped with delight and raced each other through the night to the waiting carriage.


	5. 5

The circus tent was much bigger and noisier than Millie had anticipated, and so noisily teeming with people that she was put unpleasantly in mind of the processions through the dusty streets she had undergone in her days as the Living Asheth. The colours felt too bright. She began to wish she had offered or even insisted on staying behind with Christopher as Mordecai shepherded them to seats in the very front row of the ring.

Music played as they waited for the show to start, and clowns on terrifically high stilts strolled amongst the audience, juggling. One came and pulled a banana from behind a delighted Bernard's ear, and then peeled it only to make disappear into a puff of sparkling smoke. None of this particularly impressed Millie, although she could see that these things were, if done without actual magic, objectively impressive to most people: but the pleasure and mirth of the others was infectious and by the time the music changed and the show began, she was perfectly disposed to enjoy it.

And enjoy it she did. In the carriage on the way home the children hotly debated which had been the Best and Most Astonishing bit of the circus. Even Flavian and Mordecai were moved to put their oars in, in support of the dancing elephants and the glamorous ladies on horseback respectively. Millie laughed until her sides ached at the fooling of the clowns (and learned something about the nature of humour when, trying to describe it later to Christopher, she found it was impossible to convey at all why any of it had been remotely funny); she applauded breathlessly the daring of the fire and sword swallowers (Jason surprised himself by being suddenly squeamish and had to look away); she was in paroxysms of delight to eat candy floss for the first time during the interval. But to her mind nothing was comparable to the trapeze artists whose performance was the finale of the whole show. They consisted of a family of 3 women and 2 men, all with jet black hair and skin tight shimmering sky blue costumes. All five of them leapt through the air with a confidence and grace suggestive of birds of prey, but the smallest, barely discernible as a woman from her too-lithe body, was in a different class altogether. She leapt further and did more somersaults between trapezes than the others; but it wasn't only that. There were undulations within the path she took through the air which clashed with the laws of physics as Millie knew them (which is to say, academically not at all - but like anyone, enough instinctively to know when she saw something that defied them). Millie clapped the trapeze family until her hands were red and stinging.

As the children filed out of the circus tent, a final surprise was disclosed to them. Flavian told them that it had been arranged that they and a small group of other well-dressed children were to be taken to meet the circus animals. The excitement in Flavian's voice as he led the way to the holding pen where he animals were waiting led Mordecai to remark, with his usual good-natured teasing manner, that the children had been brought along only to justify Flavian's own Christmas treat. Millie said she would prefer to stay behind. She wasn't ashamed to say that the lions made her nervous and privately the other animals made her a bit sad now that she came to think of them as creatures living in captivity and forced to perform a role that they couldn't choose and which could have no meaning for them. Mordecai, who had more insight into what her life before coming to the Castle had been than the others, nodded briskly when she proposed to wait for the others near the entrance and smoothed things over when Bernard tried to persuade her to come along by speculating that they might be allowed to shake hands with the seals, leading Bernard and Jason to debate whether seals had flippers or fins.

Millie wandered out into the night, which was lighted by flaming torches in sticks lining the way from the field where the tent had been erected to the road. To escape the throng of people pressing out of the tent and down the muddy path, Millie walked around to the back of the tent. She was glad of the frosty night air after the closeness of the tent.

She set off with a disregard for her personal safety and for the sort of interest that a lone young girl in an obviously expensive coat and muffler might arise which was born partly of her naivety about the world she now lived in and partly from the knowledge that the strength of her magical abilities were almost certainly greater than that of all the other non-Castle folk in the vicinity combined. She wandered idly around for a while, ending up by a make-shift stable block. The horses in it were not the sleek, well fed white ones who had galloped around the ring with Mordecai's elegant ladies performing acrobatics upon them, but dull, worried looking nags who Millie realised must be employed to pull the many circus caravans around her, forming a messy camp, from place to place.

She patted the long nose of the spare brown horse nearest to her and conjured a carrot to give her. Just then, the rickety wooden door of a nearby caravan opened, a forlorn and scraggly looking child half-fell out of it and a harsh voice shouted "and don't come back until ye've got some, ye can sleep in the stable for all I care". The door slammed shut.

Millie stared at the child. It was too dark for her to make out any sky blue under the rough brown cloak the child had on, and there was nothing in its shoulder length dirty ginger hair or its bearing to suggest a connection with the trapeze artist Millie had so admired. But Millie's own powerful and sensitive magic thrilled to the silent fizzing of the child's magic and she recognised at once that this was the same person, somehow, as the glittering figure she had perceived as a grown woman.

The child disappeared behind the back of the stable block, and Millie ran to follow her, wanting to tell her how marvellous she had been and wondering whether she could ask for an autograph.

It was dark behind the stable block because, away from the torches erected to guide the audience members home, the only light was from sporadic fires in metal containers around which small bunches of circus folk were warming themselves, talking and laughing and in some cases frying delicious smelling sausages.

Millie faltered in her step as she followed the trapeze girl further around the block and the impact from the smell of the stables hit her in full. Millie hadn't spent much time around horses and no time around them in such number. So she was still standing in the shadows, unobserved, when the trapeze girl went over to a momentarily unattended fire by the side of the stables and stood by it briefly, as if trying to decide which part of her was most in need of warming.

"Yer mum thrown you out again, has she?" The voice seemed to come from nowhere and was followed by the appearance of tall figure in a coat so dark that Millie could only make out of him a white blob at his face and a shadowy bulk. The voice did not, then, seem unpleasant.

"She's not my mum", the trapeze girl's accent was a mixture of many regional dialects and Millie at first struggled to understand every word. The girl started moving away from the fire, with a shuffling sort of gate that was worlds away from the avian grace she'd displayed in the big top.

"Hey", the man's -boy's? Perhaps somewhere in between - voice came. "You can stop by our fire awhile if you like".

The girl came shuffling back, her head at an angle suggesting pride but everything else suggesting utter dejection. She said nothing. Millie didn't now know what she could say to the girl. She felt ridiculous for having thought of an autograph. Her one thought was to get away without drawing any attention to herself. Normally it would be the work of a second to magic herself away but she felt sure that anyone with magic as strong as the trapeze girl seemed to have would be able to sense it at once and maybe follow her.

"What you done, then?" the voice asked, conversationally.

"Not one thing." The girl's voice was completely expressionless. "She wants me to go after some spirits. She'll let me back into my bed if I can get some for her, not else". For Millie, spirits meant ghosts. It seemed a baffling errand.

The fire crackled on. "I've room enough in mine for two, if one's as small as you". The voice was more friendly all of a sudden, but much less pleasant. The bulky shadow moved closer to the trapeze girl.

"No, you're all right" the girl said in the same expressionless voice. "I've got other places".

"What other places?" The voice seemed to have decided not to bother with friendliness after all. "D'you think nobody knows that you sleep in the stables? Can smell it on you for miles" he jeered.

"You'd best get away from me then, hadn't you". Millie couldn't believe the girl's voice was still so expressionless when she must be terrified. The stranger was standing behind her now so that her shadow had been swallowed up by his. The white blobs of his hands at the end of his dark sleeves were round her waist.

Millie could take no more and in a panic she conjured an apparition of a tiger running past the stable block, whizzing by the fire mere inches away from the faces of the two standing by it, and around the corner of the stable towards the circus tent. He swore and started running after it, shouting and banging on doors as he went.


	6. 6

The girl was left alone by the fire. Uncertainly, Millie stepped out of the shadows. "Are you all right?" she asked. Millie herself was shaking. Living with only women in the temple of Asheth had not prepared her for the horror of the threat of male violence.

The girl stared at her with an expression halfway between the usual blankness and dislike. "You don't belong here", she said to Millie rudely. "And you're like as not going to get eaten by a tiger if you stick around".

"That wasn't a real tiger", said Millie. "I couldn't think what else to do. Are you all right? Why didn't _you _do something to stop that awful man?"

The girl barked a mirthless laugh. "Do something? What d'you think I was doing? You get them still and off their guard and then you drop to a crouch on the floor out their grasp and you run for it. I've never yet failed at outrunning his kind. And that wasn't a man, it was only Ben Goodwin. He's fourteen if he's a day, no older than me. I've escaped worse than him."

"Not that you'll need that kind of trick", she said bitterly after a pause. "No danger comes to the likes of you, unless you're for getting eaten by a tiger tonight, that is".

"I told you, it wasn't a real tiger. I just conjured an illusion that only you two - and me- could see, to make him leave you alone.", Millie said. "And I meant, why didn't you use magic? You could have had a rock drop on his head, or sent him to a distant place never to come back, or even worse and he'd have deserved them all".

It was hard to tell, given her normal blank expression, whether the trapeze girl was really unable to understand Millie's simple words. She shrugged. "I don't know magic. There's a woman used to be a dancer that does some charms and brews. Fat lot of good that would do me. You'd better go. Your fancy people will think you've been eaten by yon tiger. I stay because I'm cold and I don't care if I get eaten by a tiger or not."

Millie felt herself getting cross at the girl's seemingly wilful ignorance. "Not silly hedge-witch charms, proper powerful magic! Don't you know you've got it? You've got a fierce magic simply pulsing from you! I should think you must be an enchantress. And I should know."

The girl looked completely uninterested. She just said "You get back to your carriage and your family and don't worry your pretty little head about what you've seen here" and looked into the fire. "Good luck with the tiger, if you run into him."

"I MADE THE TIGER!" Millie shouted in exasperation. "Why won't you listen to me? It's because you think I don't know anything about what your life is like" she gabbled on "and I don't, of course, but I do know what it's like to be a prisoner and to fear for your life and to have a friend who can save you".

Whether any of this had hit home or not, Millie would never know. At that moment, Millie heard Mordecai's voice softly calling her name, and felt the magnetic tug of his magic pulling her to him. The girl heard it too, gave Millie a scornful look and ran. There wasn't much that Millie could do but follow the pull of Mordecai's spell back towards her friends, waiting by the now nearly deserted entrance to the Big Top. At least I don't have to worry about her getting away from that awful boy, Millie reflected. She wasn't wrong about being able to run! Millie hadn't even had time to see what direction the girl had gone.


	7. 7

Mille could think of nothing but the trapeze girl as the carriage clattered the 5 mile distance back to the Castle. Was it possible for the girl really not to know that she had a vast amount of magical power at her fingertips? Millie thought of Christopher had spending years using extraordinary magic to travel to different worlds at night, and being unable to do simple spells by day, and could believe it. And - more importantly - was the girl's life as thoroughly miserable as that glimpse of it had suggested?

The conversation in the carriage was sleepily desultory. Bernard had given up altogether and was nodding with his head on Flavian's shoulder.

"Did you notice the extraordinary magic from the trapeze girl?" Millie asked the others. There was a murmur of mild agreement, nothing more.

"I thought they were all grown ups" said Jason, "and they were all jolly good".

"Oh, one was certainly just my age, I think, it was clear when you saw her close up" replied Elizabeth, "you know, when she landed right near our seats at the end, after all those somersaults. And she was by far the best: do you mean that one, Millie? I felt a sense of power coming from her, I think. A bit, anyway."

"A lot of these circus people probably use magic," Mordecai agreed. "I didn't see any poles holding up the structure of the Big Top, for a start. And what about the strong man?"

A lively debate broke out about whether the strong man had been assisted by magic, and whether or not that was cheating. "Nobody's arms are _that _strong" protested Jason, in opposition to Flavian's insistence that it was all real. Millie smiled, thinking of Christopher fooling with her case at the station.

"Yes, but this girl was different", she broke into the conversation again. "It wasn't so much what she was doing as the _feel_ of magic. It was a bit like when I first met Christopher and I could just feel there was something about him that made him, well, like me."

Flavian and Mordecai exchanged glances. "I agree, I felt a strong sense of magic from one of the trapeze artists too", said Flavian. "But without having met the person in question, it's hard to know whether that sense is right or whether it was deflected from some other magic, for example. And although enchanter level magic is rare, there's no reason why a circus person couldn't have it. Good luck to her, I say!"

Millie sighed. This was perfectly true, and there must be hundreds of people in unhappy living situations, so there really wasn't any reason in the related worlds for her to carry on thinking about the trapeze girl all night. And yet, somehow, that was exactly what she did.


	8. 8

"What shall we do today?" Christopher beamed at Millie, as they turned away from the largest window in the upstairs drawing room, where they'd been sitting on the window seat with their legs curled underneath them, watching the carriage trundle away again to the station with Bernard and Jason in it, ready to go home for Christmas. Elizabeth's parents had already come to fetch her home in their carriage, straight after breakfast. Millie was already looking forward to seeing them again in ten days, but also thrilled to have the full run of the Castle with Christopher and the cats for a while.

"I don't mind what we do today, but I'll tell you what we're doing this evening", she said. "We're going to steal away from the Castle and go to the circus".

Christopher looked sceptical. He had all but forgotten his rage and disappointment from the previous day, the only remnant being the way he glared at Gabriel with particularly ill-disguised resentment whenever they passed. He reflected that though he'd be glad enough to see a circus, he wasn't at all sure it would be worth another row and further punishment to ruin the rest of his hols.

"Millie, I've got a better idea if you want a nighttime adventure. We could go spirit travelling! I'm sure I can take you along with me, as I used to with Tacroy. Mordecai, I mean. We could go anywhere! Somewhere really warm, for example, you'd like that - we could swim in the sea!".

"I absolutely want to do that, Christopher", Millie said. It was odd that it hadn't occurred to them before, all the weeks of that long summer they'd had before Millie went to school and the other children arrived. She realised with a jolt that there wasn't really anything to stop her from going back to her own world on a visit. Or was there? How sufficiently had the use of Throgmorten's life fooled Asheth? Millie didn't know. It was hard to feel as though she had completely separated from the part of her which was the Living Asheth when that was the part to which she had always attributed her powers, and those were undimmed by the separation. And when she wasn't thinking about it at all, sometimes her Goddess arms appeared around her and she had to consciously stop them before one of her school mates or mistresses noticed. Didn't that mean that she was, on some level, still the Goddess, and the Goddess her? It was one of the things she'd most been looking forward to talking to Christopher about. But that was a matter for another moment.

"No, listen", she said, for Christopher was in full flight of eloquence, jumping around and describing the many places he would show her. "I absolutely want to go to everyone of those places - especially the one with the floating islands in the luminous lake, please - but not tonight." She explained to Christopher about her meeting with the trapeze girl and the continuing conviction she had that something ought to be done about her.

Christopher was thoughtful. Millie watched him, thinking how she liked him when he was thinking so hard that he forgot to think about the figure he was cutting.

"It sounds rotten for her, of course, and I've no doubt you're right and she's got lots of super magic", he said. "But, Millie, lots of people live with people who aren't terribly nice."

"I know".

"And surely if her magic's that strong then she'll have to realise it eventually, and then she can start using it to do whatever she wants with nobody to control her. I should think that will be rather nice, actually", he added.

"I know".

"Well, then. I mean, far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to break Gabriel's stupid rules, but I can't see the point."

"Nor can I, really", Millie admitted. "All those things are true, but I still want to go back. Perhaps it's only because when I was in a terrible mess someone saved me, even if I had to stick him in a wall first. Just come with me and see her, that's all."

"You saved yourself, silly!" Christopher laughed. "I didn't have any say in it. But very well, let's have this nighttime adventure of yours. How shall we manage it?"

The crept down to one of the downstairs toilets, the one near the small door out of the East Wing into the grounds, and which had been considered a good place to hang a framed map of the local area to which nobody had ever had cause to refer but which everybody thought might one day come in handy.

They eased it from its frame, conjured a replacement that looked sufficiently similar to re-hang and then pored over it shoulder to shoulder in the playroom, with the warm glow of conspiratorial endeavour.

"That's the field the circus is on, look" Mille pointed. "It's part of Becketts Farm. Of course yesterday we went by road, but there's a much more direct route as the crow flies over Fresham Forest, like this."

"We're not crows, but we can easily fly", Christopher pointed out. One of the first things they had done over the summer had been to contrive a way to bespell tea-trays and to race around the air on them, much to the consternation of all the castle staff who were charged with their safety and well-being. "But how do we make sure we don't lose our way over the forest? It'll be very dark and all forest looks the same, even if you're just skimming over the top of the trees."

"There may be some way we could adapt Mordecai's magnet spell - the one he used to draw me to him yesterday - and use it to draw us to a place", Millie mused. "I - oh rats, that's the gong for lunch. Let's see if we can get any pointers from Flavian or someone without making them suspicious while we have it."

They didn't at all succeed. Christopher was sitting next to Mordecai and brought up the subject of the magnet spell and its components. "Magic theory on the first day of your holidays, Christopher?" Flavian said jovially, overhearing. "You must be up to something!" This led into some light hearted teasing which was easily deflected, but it was impossible then to return to the subject without arousing suspicion. Millie and Christopher shrugged at each other. They'd just have to work it out on their own.

They did learn two valuable pieces of information, anyway- that tonight was the second and final night of the circus's time at Bowbridge, and it would be moving on in the morning, and that a large group of the castle staff would be going to the performance. It didn't sound as though any of the senior staff would be going, but the group would include a large quantity of secretarial and household staff, as well as most of the gardeners.

"I expect all the senior staff think they're far too serious and important," Christopher said scornfully as he and Millie walked back up the stairs after lunch. "Imagine Dr Simeon at a circus! Anyway, it's a bit of luck for us."

"Is it?" They'd already agreed that they'd illusion their beds to make it look as though they were sleeping in them before they went, which would deal with the problem of Mary coming to check that they were in bed at the right time.

"Yes, because listen. What about the spells around the grounds which make a mighty rumpus and alert Gabriel if we ever try to leave them? I was told about them when I first came here in no uncertain terms when I first arrived. I can break through anything that stops us leaving, but I've no idea at all how to turn those off and I wouldn't put it past Gabriel to use his strongest magic on them", said Christopher. "But the staff are going to go in the carriage, or as many of them that can fit - that's what Yolande said. If we hop on to that to get out of the grounds, I think it will stop the alarm from those spells sounding."

"Yes, I think it will too," said Millie, a smile spreading over her face. "I'd forgotten about the alarm but you're right, because we've been out in the carriage with servants without Gabriel or Rosalie or any of the important castle people before, haven't we, without the alarm going. The time we had to go into town to pick up my school uniform we just went with Annie, remember? And whenever we walked into the village to buy sweets over the summer, we were with a castle grown up each time we went through the gates. I'm sure Gabriel wasn't cancelling the alarm spell each time, he probably wasn't even there half the time!"

"Maybe it's not the carriage, then. It must be just being with any trustworthy castle grown up that does it. But either way, the carriage will be bursting with them! I'm beginning to think this is possible after all, you know".

"Of course it is!" said Millie. "Come on, let's work out this magnet spell".


	9. 9

They did not work out the magnet spell over the course of the afternoon. The problem was that they both had such strong instinctive magic that they could do most things in their own way, without knowing how they were doing them. This was all very well until it came to dissecting what someone else had done and trying to use it for their own ends.

"Honestly, this is almost enough to make me see the point in magic theory" grumbled Christopher after the third failed attempt at the spell, for which he had stood in the cold rain (the snow of the previous week was a distant memory) at the gates, waiting in vain for twenty minutes to feel the magical tug hat would nudge him back towards the castle, whilst Millie worked the spell with the map in the drawing room.

"Never mind", she said cheerfully. "Your turn to try to do the spell from inside now, anyway. Lend me your galoshes."

But just then Mary came to tell the children that they were to have an early tea in the playroom, because there would be no servants to see to them later. The grown ups were just having cold meat and bread and butter for dinner later, she told them, but that hadn't been considering sufficiently nourishing for children. They might have rather preferred it to the boiled chicken and stringy beans they were given, but it was another bit of luck, of course, because it meant that they didn't have to worry at all about covering up their absence in the evening. Had they realised that the arrangement had been made because Mordecai and Flavian were going to use dinner time to introduce their colleagues to the winterberry gin they had bottled last year and now thought ripe for the drinking, and therefore that almost all the responsible adults in the castle would be drunk by 8, they would have worried even less.

So after dinner, with no time to worry anymore about the magnet spell ("we'll get back somehow", Millie said comfortably), they changed and crept downstairs to wait for the servants to assemble. They had made themselves invisible of course, but hid behind the many long coats hanging down the back of the hall that led down to the servants quarters, because if Gabriel, Rosalie or any of the other senior staff were to pass by then they were under no illusions that their invisibility would ensure they evaded detection. Millie was wearing an old tweed suit - trousers, waistcoat and jacket, with one of her own embroidered blouses underneath - of Christopher's, under an old coat they thought had belonged to one of the servants. This had been Millie's idea because she thought perhaps some of the girl's hostility the previous night had been because she'd been blinded by Millie's beautiful new royal blue coat and muffler, and the world of difference between them that it apparently revealed. Christopher said he didn't care if he was going to be invisible most of the time, he wasn't going to dress shabbily for anyone. So he was still wearing his warmest winter suit and his new coat with the magenta lining.

As the servants started to assemble, Millie and Christopher grabbed their tea trays and slipped out through one of the side doors to the hall, and ran around to wait at the front of the castle, where the carriage had pulled up. They spent some time considering where best they were to position themselves. The best place by far would have been the pillion seat at the back of the carriage. It was just a ledge, really, but wide enough to be quite safe. But they couldn't be sure that nobody else would try to sit there and that obviously would never do. To be on the safe side they pulled and scrambled - with great difficult, because it was a tall, impressive carriage, which was wet and slippery in the rain - their way on to the roof of the carriage and used very strong magic to fasten themselves there. There they waited, holding on to their tea trays and shivering, for the circus-goers to emerge. It seemed to take an age, and several times Christopher asked himself what had possessed him to encourage this hare-brained scheme of Millie's. He supposed he'd just been so pleased that the holidays had come and to be spending them with her that he'd have let her talk him into almost anything.

At last the party from the castle streamed out of the door and started filling up the carriage. There was much merriment as everyone joked about who should get the seats in the carriage, and who would have to sit in whose lap. Somehow Yolande who did the typing ended up sitting on the pillion seat with a young man called Fraser, whose job had something to do with monitoring imports and exports of magical substances and materials. Mille tried to exchange a glance of self-satisfied relief with Christopher - they had certainly been wise not to sit there - but of course they were both invisible.

Christopher was remembering that Fraser, like many of the staff at the castle, even those in non-magical roles, had some degree of magic. He knew that Fraser was no enchanter, but would his magical sense be strong enough to alert him to the magical activity on the roof of the carriage? He could only hope it wouldn't.

The carriage jerked and jolted off, to cheers from the group within it, and a little shriek from Yolande on the pillion seat. Fraser grabbed her comfortingly round the waist, and began to talk about how decent it had been of Gabriel to tell the staff that they could use the carriage for their own merry-making.

"It's not many people in his position who would do that", Yolande agreed, "let alone bespell it so that nobody needs to stay with it to keep it safe while we're gone. He's a lovely man to work for, Mr De Witt is."

Christopher almost snorted audibly. There didn't seem to him to be any reason why a man in Gabriel's position wouldn't let his servants use his things whilst he wasn't using them, and he was no frame of mind to hear Gabriel praised.

Worse was to come. Fraser went on to talk about how lucky Gabriel was to have Yolande working for him, and how lucky it was for him, Fraser, that he got to see her every day. Not long after that they were holding hands and kissing as passionately as anyone could be expected to kiss when the jolts of a two-horse drawn carriage on a rural road were bumping them about. The carriage ride seemed to last forever. Christopher was glad when the rain got quicker and harder, thinking that would stop them, but they barely seemed to notice.

"Thank goodness we're not taking the carriage on the way back!" Christopher said when at last the party had arrived at the circus, drawn up the carriage in a neighbouring field and the head gardener had unwrapped the spell Gabriel had given them. It immediately transformed the carriage into a rusty old cart, and the horses into fierce looking pit bull dogs. Everybody clapped and the party set off merrily for the circus tent.

"I'd rather ride on our tea trays for miles through the rain than listen to any more of that", Millie agreed as they clambered down. This was much easier to do now that the carriage was a cart. "What on earth possesses grown-ups to go so soppy?"

They took their tea trays and continued invisibly through the field towards the circus, too. "I don't know," Christopher said, "But I think it happens to the best of them. Look at Mordecai! He's really the best fellow anyone could hope to meet, but just look at how silly he gets when he's with Rosalie."

"Well, we're far too sensible to get like that; anyway", Millie said confidently. "Let's promise."

"No fear!" Christopher agreed, and after a few failed attempts to find each other's invisible hands, they shook on it.


	10. 10

The crowds had filed in to the huge stripey tent, which was holding up steadily in the lashing rain despite the complete absence of poles, Millie noticed with interest. When the Big Top was almost full, she said leaned her tea tray against the side of the tent and said "come on, let's go inside now. We ought to be able to find somewhere to - ow!"

"Sorry, was that your foot?" Christopher said. "That's the fifth time. I say, why don't we make ourselves visible only to each other?"

It was a good idea and one they could usefully have thought of much earlier. Try grinned sheepishly at one another as they each blinked into the other's view.

They went inside the flapping door, squeezd around a clown juggling in the middle of the aisle, and perched on the wooden barrier which separated the circus ring from the crowds. It felt a bit too close to comfort for Millie, but it was hard to see where else to stand in such a packed tent.

They had to move quite quickly into the performance, though, when a clown rode his penny-farthing cycle into Christopher's leg. They hurriedly swung their legs out of the ring and stood in the aisle instead, while the clown carried on with his performance as if the slight wobble and the nanosecond of confusion they'd seen on his face hadn't happened at all.

Millie was glad she could see Christopher, even if nobody else could, because it was so jolly sharing the fun of the circus with him. He laughed so hard he almost fell over at the clowns ("Now I see what you mean!", he wheezed) and he was thrilled by the lion tamers. They'd both almost forgotten why they were there by the time the trapeze act started.

Millie recognised the girl at once by the vibrations of her fizzing, wild magic, but she didn't say anything to Christopher. Still, before the five trapeze artists had even climbed the ladders to begin their act, he pointed at the girl and said "it's that one, isn't it?" Millie nodded.

Tha act was as extraordinary as it had been before. Millie couldn't help but hold her breath each time the trapeze artists launched themselves into the air, and sigh with relief when they reached their destinations, and the girl was even more magnificent. At one point she seemed to be plummeting to the ground and every mouth in the audience opened in shock, but then suddenly she was soaring upwards again.

As the audience clapped and cheered at the end, Millie and Christopher hurried out of the tent before they got trampled by the crowds flowing out. They walked around and found another large opening in the tent, at the opposite side from where the crowds went in and out. "I'll bet the circus people come out this way", Christopher said. "Oh good, it's stopped raining".

They stood near the opening for a considerable time, watching the lions and elephants and horses be led away. "I hope they get a royal supper for all that work and showmanship" Millie said, and Christopher agreed. After a while the stream of animals and animal-keepers slowed down and then stopped. Millie and Christopher peeped into the Big Top to find it empty, save for some ladies wearing colourful headscarves sweeping it and folding away the chairs.

"That's a blow. There must be some other way out that all the human performers went," said Christopher. "We shouldn't have allowed ourselves to get distracted by those magnificent lions." His eyes were still shining as he thought of them.

"Well, never mind. Her caravan's round near the sort-of stable block they've put up, I know where it is." They talked softly, and picked their way through the campsite.

The forceful stable smell was just beginning to make itself apparent when Millie stopped short. A girl in a dark ragged cloak was crouching with a woman and a boy about their own age around one of the several campfires in bins which were dotted about the fold. She was laughing and wolfing down the sausages that the woman fried on the fire. The woman had long dark hair tied with a red scarf and enormous hoops on her ears. She looked exactly as Millie thought a circus woman should look, and what's more she was laughing good-humouredly and doling our sausages in a casual kindly way that left no doubt as to the kind of person she was. The boy certainly wasn't the horrible intruder from the previous night, but it was hard to say much more about him than that, as he was stolidly eating sausages.

"Is that her?" Christopher whispered. He sounded disappointed, but Millie couldn't tell if this was because the girl looked so different from her dazzling circus self, or because she was so different from how Millie had described her post-circus self. The girl had eaten 8 sausages and was mopping up the grease with a large chunk of bread by this point.

"I don't understand", Millie said quietly, nodding. They stood a while longer, Millie wondering what had happened to make the girl's life so different and Christopher thinking mostly about how much he'd like some sausages. At length the circus lady put away the saucepan and pulled out a strangely shaped guitar. She began to play and sing a song in a language that the children didn't know. The song was both fast and slightly melancholy, and the boy started to dance. He held out his hands and said in a nice, clear voice to the girl "have a dance?" The girl shook her head, smiling, so the boy carried on a surprisingly graceful dance and the girl shook a tambourine at appropriate moments. A happier circus scene could hardly be imagined.

"Well", whispered Christopher cheerily at last. "It's good that things have looked up for her, and I'm jolly pleased I got to see the circus after all. But shall we go home now?" It had started to rain again.

Millie agreed. They started to walk away, making next to no noise as they did so and certainly none that could be heard over the music and the fire. But behind them the girl sprang up. "Walk you back?" the boy offered? The girl shook her head. "Thanks though, Luca. And thanks for the sausages." The last was to the woman, who gave the girl a quick hug and said "any trouble, come back to us, do you hear?", and then started to pack away the music and supper things as the rain quickened.

The girl ran lightly to right where Millie and Christopher had stopped in their tracks as they heard her approach, half the way back to the stables. She peered around in the darkness, checking behind the pile of crates that was next to them, muttering to herself. Millie hesitated, and then waved a hand to make herself and Christopher visible again.

The girl's eyes widened when she saw two people suddenly pop into existence in front of her, and then narrow again with suspicion. "I _knew _there was something there!" she said. "Who are you?"

Christopher opened his mouth, but the girl continued, staring at Millie "You're that girl from last night." It sounded like an accusation, but Millie nodded. "That was pretty good, that thing with the tiger", the girl added, begrudgingly. "Ben got everyone in the whole circus company on a mad chase for an escaped tiger, before someone checked that both the tigers were safely in their cages. Nobody's speaking to Ben now. I'd like to be able to do that."

"I'm sure you could," Millie said enthusiastically. "Your magic seems so powerful. Is there anybody you know that could teach you magic?"

"Not like that", the girl replied. "Only spells to keep spiders away and that sort of thing. I like spiders", she added, inconsequentially.

"Well, I hope you find someone - at the next place the circus goes, perhaps" Christopher said, politely. "I'm sure there must be plenty of people in the big cities who can teach you some of what you could learn, at least. And you can already do magic, of course. Any fool can see you were using magic to do that tremendous swoop on the trapeze."

There was a silence. It occurred to Millie that the girl hadn't known that she was using magic at all. She had thought that she was simply exceptionally good at the trapeze.

"Can't you teach me?" the girl said, suddenly, to Millie. She was such a proud person that Millie thought it must have cost her something to ask. But she shook her head, sadly. "The trouble is that I'm like you, I think. I can do things, lots of things, but I don't know how. It's a problem because it means I can't always do them the same way twice, and I can't always work out how to do new things. I wouldn't be much good as a teacher, even if I could find a way to get to wherever you'd be."

"It's a shame that you have to travel with the circus," Christopher said, kindly. "Otherwise you'd probably be able to come and do lessons at the Castle with us. We learn magic morning, noon and night" he added with more feeling than truth.

"Maybe you could!" Millie felt excited. "You could still come back to the circus during the hols, after all, and there are four other trapeze people anyway. I don't think it costs anything, either." She thought it couldn't do. Bernard and Elizabeth's families were quite well to do, but Jason had cheerfully told them that his dad was a farm labourer.

"Would your parents allow it, do you think?"

There was another silence. "I haven't any parents", the girl said, flatly. "Just my step-mother and hell'll freeze over before she lets me out of her clutches. And anyway, the circus is all I know."

That seemed to be that. Christopher and Millie showed the girl some simple spells, and she tried to do them herself. Each time she failed. It was a puzzle. "I don't understand it", Millie said for the second time that night. "I can feel the magic - you positively reek of it. Not an actual smell, you know, just a sense" she added hastily, as she saw the girl blush and fidget.

She turned to Christopher. "Could there be something stopping her, something like you and silver?"

Christopher pondered. "But she does magic all right in the circus, doesn't she?" he mused. "So whatever it is, it can't be something that's with her when she's there."

The girl had had enough of being spoken about as if she wasn't there. "Thanks for coming back, anyway, even if it was just a waste of time for us all" she said to Millie. It was hard to tell whether she was being sarcastic. She turned to go. Millie couldn't think of a reason to detain her, so she called "good luck!" and waved, as the girl slipped away into the shadows.

At least they'd found out that there were nice people at the circus and that the girl got enough to eat, Millie reflected. Invisible again to everyone but each other, they walked back to collect their tea trays. Christopher was relieved rather than anything else. He hadn't relished the prospect of telling Gabriel that he'd stolen away to the circus in defiance of the rules, and that he'd recruited a new pupil for their little band, whom he was by no means sure that Gabriel would welcome, whilst he was at it.

Back at the tent, they picked up their rain-drenched tea-trays from where they'd left them. It was raining hard enough now that even though Millie dried hers with a section of the long folds of the old coat she was wearing, it was sopping again by the time she'd floated it in the air to the right height - level with her thigh - and sat herself in the middle of it, with her legs dangling over the side. Then she floated it up higher in the air, a little higher than the height of a very tall man, while Christopher did the same.

"What do you think? Shall we try the magnet spell?"

Christopher was growing weary of the adventure and inclined to risk a misfiring spell in the interests of getting home sooner. "I'll try it, and if it goes wrong then you'll know not to", he said with an air of noble self-sacrifice.

He waved his hands over either side of his tea tray, saying the same words that they'd said over the map with the string marking the route, to get the tray to be drawn to the Castle. He admitted later that he _had _said the words extremely quickly.

The effect was that his tea tray shot forward like a bullet from a gun. Christopher's hair was whipped against his face as he sped through the darkness, gripping onto the sides of the tray with white knuckled fingers and leaning backwards so as not to be propelled forwards by the momentum whilst he gathered his wits to magic himself stuck to it. Within 5 seconds he had left the Big Top far behind and was hurtling into the forest.

The force of the pull was such that even when he saw through the darkness that he was headed into the trunk of a particularly tall and sturdy oak tree, which towered above the neighbouring beeches and lindens, there was little he could do. There was no steering the tea tray with gentle pressure of the hand on the side you wanted it to go in, as he and Millie normally did when they raced the tea trays through the air. The magnetic pull was much too strong: the tea tray would go in the direction of the thread laid across the map and no other. And the repeated failed attempts to practice the spell out in the garden had apparently somehow strengthened the spell now that it was working- Christopher couldn't cancel it using any of the normal methods, either. All he could do was to throw himself sideways off the tea tray mere seconds before it smashed into the tree, and then slow his descent and cushion himself against the branches as he tumbled to the ground in a way that was painful to both his person and his dignity.

"Christopher!" Millie shouted in alarm as she hastily steered her own tea tray down through the trees to land in the woodland below the place where she thought she'd heard him fall. When she'd seen Christopher shoot off like a horizontal rocket, she had immediately set off on her own tea tray, using the normal magic they always used to fly them, and had raced off after him. But the magnet spell was pulling Christopher at an unreachable speed and in the almost total black of nighttime in the countryside she'd lost him quickly. She'd settled for flying straight on, reasoning correctly that he wouldn't be able to change direction, and had been only 50 yards or so behind when she heard the smash of the tray and then the thump and swearing of Christopher landing.

"I'm here", came Christopher's voice, sounding small and thin through the blackness. "At least I haven't lost a life," he added more solidly, and Millie realised he wasn't far away. She picked her way through the wet trees, twigs snapping back and spraying her face with icy water every second step.

She found him quickly. He was looking a bit rueful and holding a small fraction of his tea tray in his hand. "Dashed to smithereens," he said. "Here's a pickle for us."

He was grinning wryly now, as if the predicament were quite a good joke after all. That was one of things about Christopher.

Millie thought for a while. She bewitched her hand to emit a beam of bright light, and searched around for fragments of the tea tray for a few minutes with a view to putting them back together.

"We could just conjure all the pieces to appear in our hands and then magic them back together", Christopher pointed out. "The problem is that I don't know how to take the magnet spell off it. It seems fearfully strong. I mean, we put the spell on, so in theory we must be able to take it off. But I don't know how."

"It's our usual problem of not really knowing how we've done it" Millie agreed. "I really think we'd better start paying more attention in magic theory, you know."

"That's no help now" Christopher said, and of course it was true. They pondered coldly and wetly for a while. At length Millie said, "Look here, we could both fit on my tea tray, I think. It will be a squeeze, but at least that'll help keep us warm. Why don't we try that. We'll float up much higher before we start, so there won't be any danger of further tree incidents. And I'll say the words slowly- you gabbled them, you know - which might make it go at a more sensible pace."

"I didn't gabble them! I said them quite quickly, that's all" Christopher protested, but his heart wasn't really in it. "All right. I just hope my suit can survive another plummet, if that's what it comes to."

Millie floated the tea tray half way up to her waist and they squirmed about for awhile on it, trying to find a safe position for them both for the flight. The tea tray had slightly raised edges with wooden handles at either side, upon which each of them half-sat if they moved too far over to accommodate the other. At last they found a semi-comfortable arrangement whereby Millie sat slightly further forward than Christopher, half on his lap, her hands gripping the front part of the handles with his gripping the back part. Christopher's long legs still dangled far below hers over the side. He grumbled a bit but neither could think of a better arrangement, so Millie floated the tea tray up high. She went far higher than the tallest tree, to be in the safe side. The wind was perceptibly colder up so high, and she shivered. "Don't look down" Christopher warned her, but it was so dark she couldn't have seen anything even if she had.

"I hope this works", she muttered. "I've no earthly idea where we are." She said the words with a studied slowness and off they went.

The tea tray started to move so slowly that at first Millie thought that the spell hadn't worked at all. It was so different from the bullet-shot speed of Christopher's tray that they both started to laugh.

"Oh dear!" said Millie, after a while. "It'll take us all night at this rate. Let's try to speed it up."

But as they had found with Christopher's tea tray, the spell once activated did not like to be interfered with. They tried many different ways but simply could not make it go faster. Christopher even tried jerking his leg back at the knee to kick up into the bottom of the tray in an attempt to spur it on, but this only caused it to jolt angrily and almost shunt them off. (They hadn't liked to fasten themselves on with magic just in case they needed to make an emergency exit, despite the extra precautions they had taken.) Millie thought that the tea tray went, if anything, a bit slower still after that.

They carried on at a snails pace for what seemed like hours. Christopher busied himself by magicking a sort of canopy over their heads to keep off most of the rain. Even accounting for the tea tray's very stately progress, Millie didn't like to let go of the handles with even one hand- they were so _very _high up - so at length she used her extra Goddess arms, which helpfully appeared at will, and magicked a strong beam of light onto the palm of her spare right hand. She pointed it towards the distant ground and they peered down after it.

"That's just field beneath us, I think." Christopher said, squinting. "We must be past the woods, at any rate. Shall we jump down? I'm sure we should be quicker walking."

"I'm sure we should be", Millie agreed, "but in what direction?"

That was the problem, Christopher acknowledged, and the reason they'd done the blasted spell in the first place. They resigned themselves to a long, long night of it. Millie worked out a warming spell, though, and with the canopy over them and the warmth bringing life and feeling back to their fingers and toes, it wasn't so bad. They chatted with increasing sleepiness - about Millie's concerns in relation to the continued presence of her Goddess arms, amongst other things. Christopher didn't really have any answers - indeed, she had not expected him to - but talking about it with someone who immediately understood it all made Millie feel as much happier about it as if he had done.

Christopher let go of one of the handles to put his arm around Millie, and she nodded off. The last thing she remembered him saying, firmly but with a bit of a chuckle in his voice, was "next time we go on a nighttime adventure, _I'll _be in charge of choosing it" and she smiled as she felt her eyes closing against her will. She couldn't really disagree.


	11. 11

Christopher must have dropped off to sleep, too. They were both startled into consciousness by the feeling of cold, wet stone pressing insistently against their knees. Eyes open wide, Millie flashed her palm, still magically emitting light, wildly around.

"Where the hell are we?" Christopher said, as he too lurched unwillingly into wakefulness. Then he started laughing as Millie illuminated the walls of the Castle they were pressing against. "Good old tea tray", he said, patting it quite affectionately. "Though we need my open window, rather than a piece of stone wall. Now that we've reached the place on the map perhaps you'll let us steer you?"

So it proved. Now that it had found the castle the magnet pull was released, and it was happy to let Millie, whose tea tray it was, steer it round and down to the large window they had left open in Christopher's room for the purpose. They heard the grandfather clock down the corridor strike 2 as they hopped down off the tea tray.

"Gosh, doesn't it feel funny being able to straighten your legs again!" said Millie. Christopher was busily closing the windows after them and drawing the thick curtains, but the many hours of icy blasts coming through them were not to be easily undone. As soon as he had got into his pyjamas and his dressing gown, he trotted down the corridor, over the large second floor landing (being careful not to bump into the suits of armour which stood there) and down another corridor to Millie's room, which was of course now much warmer. When Mary came in to wake Millie in the morning she found the two of them curled up in Millie's bed, Proudfoot purring between them, like fox cubs in a den.

Almost everyone in the castle was tired that morning, what with the licit and illicit trips to the circus on the one hand and Mordecai and Flavian's home made alcohol on the other, so nobody noticed Christopher and Millie's slightly pale faces and quieter-than-normal manner. Most of the grown ups either didn't come to breakfast or seemed barely conscious that they were there, so it was left to Millie and Christopher to do full justice to the meal, especially the sausages that they were pleased to find were set out that day. The children were tired, of course, but only in the pleasant way of people who have had an adventure and have a day filled with lazing about before them.

"I bet they taste even better fried over a campfire, though" Millie remarked with her mouth full, thinking of the sizzling smell at the circus campfire last night.

"Good Goddess, don't let Flavian hear you say that", said Christopher in real alarm, twisting round to check that Flavian hadn't appeared in the dining room yet. He told Millie in great detail about his abortive hiking trip with Flavian the previous spring, and soon the two of them were howling with laughter.

Gabriel's shadow fell between them on the white table cloth. They hadn't heard him approach, and Millie dropped her fork in surprise. They twisted awkwardly around in their seats to look at him. He did not look pleased. Christopher's heart sank. Had he found out about their escapades of the previous night? How?

"Millie, there is a young person in my study whose presence I am very much hoping you will be able to explain", Gabriel said, sternly. "Would you be so kind as to come with me?"

Millie and Christopher exchanged extremely anxious glances, which said as plain as any words "_Asheth?_" Gabriel may have correctly interpreted them, because he added "This person hails entirely from this world, but is scarcely less of an unwelcome surprise on a busy morning for that."

Millie was partly reassured by this, but still, Gabriel's expression and tone boded nothing good. She gulped, stood up, smoothed down her dress and followed Gabriel. Nobody had asked Christopher to come, but since nobody had forbidden it either, he followed Millie.

They walked very briskly (Millie had to half-run to keep up) through the hall, up the stairs and into Gabriel's imposing study. Sitting in a stiff wooden chair with a tapestry cover there, looking frightened but defiant, was the trapeze girl.

In this light, and in these surroundings, the poverty of the trapeze girl's clothes hit Millie like a bucket of cold water. The girl's cloak was filthy and torn, and sticking out from under it were battered boots that looked several sizes too big, hanging off bare legs that seemed as thin as rods. Millie immediately felt embarrassed by her own appearance - it felt like an affront for someone to be clad in a delicate lavender-coloured cotton with broderie anglaise collar and cuffs, underlaid by several carefully pressed petticoats, as she was, when other people so close by had so little. She wished she could think of a way to convey this to the girl; to say "don't be fooled! This isn't who I am!"

There was a long pause. Millie and Christopher stood awkwardly, wondering whether Gabriel would ask them to sit down (though sitting himself, he did not) and whether they should sit anyway (they didn't quite dare). At last Gabriel said, dryly, "This young person appears to have come to live at the Castle at your invitation, Millie. I trust you are prepared to take responsibility for her upkeep and education."

"Oh", Millie said, weakly, looking at the girl blankly. After a while, Gabriel asked with fearful courtesy "Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain to me how this has come about."

"Well, you see, it's not quite... that is to say, when we said about the castle and learning magic here, we -".

"We?" Gabriel asked sharply. "Our new friend described you only as her interlocutor. Am I to understand that more than one of my charges is embroiled in this affair?"

Millie conquered her natural instinct to exchange glances with Christopher. It wasn't clear why the girl hadn't mentioned him, they hadn't even told her that he wasn't supposed to be there. But it was jolly lucky for them. The truth, which was that the girl simply hadn't considered a tall, handsome, elegantly dressed and supremely well-spoken boy to be worth mentioning, didn't occur to either of them.

"No, I mean we were talking - me and..." Millie gestured vaguely. She didn't know the girl's name, and it seemed rude to say "trapeze girl". "You see in the circus she was doing the most beautiful magic, and I went afterwards to tell her how wonderful I thought she'd been, but then she seemed to be being threatened so I magicked a tiger- just an illusion, you know - and so then she said she couldn't do magic and I said she could and you can feel she's terribly magical, can't you, and she should learn here, and perhaps I should have asked but then I didn't really think she would." Millie trailed off. Then, thinking that the last bit sounded extremely ungracious and the girl looked unhappy enough, she added "I mean, not without talking more about it first, you see. Or I would have mentioned it to you, of course."

"How gratifying that, had you thought there were a real certainty of this young lady coming to present herself, you would have had the goodness to mention it to me", Gabriel said, more dryly than ever.

Millie was beginnning to get annoyed. It seemed very unfair that she was forced to explain herself in front of the girl. A large part of her wish to draw the girl to the castle had been the fear that the girl's life at the circus was lonely and cold, but she could hardly say that with the girl sitting in front of her.

But the girl herself added with a flash of her bright blue eyes at Gabriel "Yon girl has stepped out of line, that's plain to see, in offering something she'd no business to. I believe she meant to be kind, if that makes a difference. People who dress like dolls and live in castle must needs think that people like me need saving."

"That's not why, and you know it", Millie said crossly. All her crossness with Gabriel came out at the girl. "It's not being smug and fancy to think people need warm clothes and proper shelter and people who love them." She looked at Christopher for encouragement, and he nodded. "And Gabriel has also told us that people with strong magic need to be taught how to use it and control it properly. So that's why", Millie finished. She noticed the girl looking at her with a friendlier eye after her outburst and somehow the found that she was looking back and smiling.

"This young lady does appear to have very strong magical gifts", Gabriel admitted, "and it's to your credit that you perceived them, Millie. However, only children with the highest enchanter-level magic will benefit from an education here, or contribute to the education of the others. It is far from clear whether that is the case here. Young lady" he addressed the trapeze girl. "What is your name?"

The girl froze. She appeared unable to answer. She looked at Millie, apparently in desperation. Millie was confused but still feeling friendly towards the girl, and she knew something about not being able to use your old name in a new life (although she quite liked it when Christopher forgot and called her Goddess). So helpfully she said, in a clear voice, "Her name's Henrietta." It was the first name that came into her head. It could hardly have been less suitable for the bedraggled and apparently half-savage creature in front of her, but she'd said it now. Gabriel appeared to accept it, and the girl didn't object although she mouthed "_Henrietta?_" at Millie, with an expression of disgust on her face. Millie shrugged, cheerfully. You can't ask people to think of a name for you in a split second and then object to the one they come up with, she thought.

"Very well, Henrietta," Gabriel said. "It will be necessary for me and other members of my senior staff here to perform some tests to understand the extent of your latent magic. I know that you don't knowingly perform magic at the moment", he said, seeing that the girl was about to interrupt. "That won't make a difference to our observations. My prospective successor here, Christopher, had hardly started learning magic when he came here and yet one day he will be the most powerful enchanter in the related worlds." Gabriel's face had the pained look that it always wore when he contemplated Christopher as the future Chrestomanci.

"However, it's Sunday morning and this is a respectable establishment. We will soon be late for church. Millie, as Henrietta did not, I think, dress expecting either a church service or a draughty castle, you had better take her upstairs and find her something more suitable to wear. I suspect that she may not have breakfasted either, so perhaps you will then take her to the kitchen and see what Mary will do for you there. You will miss church, but I shall remember to send you with anyone who cares to go to Evensong this evening."

Christopher looked aggrieved. Millie quite enjoyed church - after living in a temple for so many years it was natural that she should take an interest in religious matters in her new home, and she found that believing very strongly in Asheth made it easier, not harder, to accept the possibility of different deities in different worlds. She also very much enjoyed the hymns and the way all the ladies wore hats. Christopher, however, did not enjoy church and he was frequently reprimanded and occasionally punished for having made his boredom too apparent.

But Gabriel said "Christopher, you and I at least shall not be deficient in our social and religious duty." When Christopher still didn't move, he said more testily "Church. After you". He opened the door and they all filed out.


End file.
